


A Long, Twisted Scar

by jmandrake



Category: Phineas and Ferb, Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension (2011)
Genre: Body Horror, Darkfic, Gen, Imprisonment, M/M, Vague Selfcest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 07:18:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18006317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmandrake/pseuds/jmandrake
Summary: You wonder sometimes if those twisted metal parts outside are meant for you. Maybe when your body stops working, when it fails the tests, they’ll just buzz clean through your bones and rewire you, too.





	A Long, Twisted Scar

**Author's Note:**

> Doof and Perry never made it back to their own dimension, and I will never get tired of very dark fic about it.

You spend most of your days in a small cell: there’s a bed, a blanket, a sink that spurts foul-smelling water, and a hole in the corner that makes you burn with shame every time you use it. The only light comes from a bright bulb outside the barred door, which leads out into a room full of scrapped robot parts and some old computer equipment. You get books to read, but you’ve always found it so hard to concentrate, and the words blur in your brain because you’re so tired, all the time.

Every week or so, he comes into your cell, marshaled guards (and one you know) waiting patiently outside your door for him to give them their next signal. He regards you with his hands clasped behind his back, lips pursed. Since you first met him, he’s gotten a new scar, one that runs jagged across his cheek and pulls down the corner of his mouth. After a few moments, he smiles, his lips twisting like a tilde.

“And how are you today?” His voice ridges with sarcasm. You mumble a response. He laughs and pulls you to your feet, positioning you in the brightest part of the room. He starts poking at you, checking your teeth, holding your eyelids open so he can shine a light in your eyes and watch your pupils get small and big. He holds your left eye open for a very long time. There’s a onceover to check for bruises and cuts, and then he weighs you in the other room, on one of those old doctor’s office scales where he has to slide the heavy black squares around. “You’re not taking care of yourself,” he mutters and pinches the flesh around your ribs, to prove that you’re too bony, too heavy, whatever he’s not satisfied with that day. Those are the only bruises you ever get, really, purpling thumbprints along the base of your ribs, dulled and gone by the time he makes another visit.

You’re not sure how much of this routine is entirely medical; there are times when he seems to get distracted, fiddling too much with the collar of your shirt, fluffing your hair between his fingers because “it’s a mess, you’re a _mess_.” Sometimes he brings you fresh clothes, even though that’s usually the Normbots’ job. He refuses to leave until you’ve put them on, and after you’ve shivered your arms through the sleeves of a clean turtleneck, he steps close again. He towers over you, and he leans over to press his lips to your cheek. His mouth is cool against your skin, cool like the steel-slick blades lining the hallways. When he pulls away, you let yourself breathe again.

He leaves Perry, _your_ Perry, to watch you from the other side of the bars, one goggled eye burning red in the dim light, his other eye dull and blank. You try to smile at him sometimes, but there’s never any response. Before, it was possible for you to read his silences, to find words for the quiet, companionable timbre of his chatters, the shrug of his shoulders, but now you can’t be sure if he’s thinking anything at all.

You try to talk to him, too, so much that you start repeating yourself. You fill up the stillness with every backstory you’ve ever told him and some you haven’t, reliving them again and again. The pain doesn’t even register for you anymore, partly because saying it out loud releases it, like letting something angry and thrashing out of its cage, and partly because you’re not really thinking about them as anything more than stories. They’re there to help you remember that Perry knew them once, too, that he held your hand when you found yourself back in Drusselstein, that whenever he found you shaking, he’d tuck a warm blanket around your shoulders, his paws tugging it tight against your chest. Now his hands are just ungainly hunks of metal, with wires running from his wrists to the back of his neck, sloppily drilled into his spine around a furry patch of dried blood. You could clean the bloody crust away with a wet thumb, but you’re not allowed to touch him, and he’s never gotten close enough for you to try.

The first night he watched over you, you screamed at him until your throat was raw. He flipped a switch on his arm, and a host of Normbots rushed down to subdue you. Perry watched, perfectly still, while they held you down and slipped a needle into your leg. You collapsed before they even locked the door back.

The second night, you cried for a very long time. He sounded no alarm. You remember thinking that was a good sign.

You wonder sometimes if those twisted metal parts outside are meant for you. Maybe when your body stops working, when it fails the tests, they’ll just buzz clean through your bones and rewire you, too. Is that what he wants, or is it only supposed to be a last resort, a desperate effort to cleave the body to a machine? You don’t know what they did to Perry before they changed him. You don’t know how much he fought, how much he screamed. Maybe he welcomed it, just to stop the pain.

But no, he wouldn’t have. Perry was— _is_ —good and selfless and brave. He wouldn’t have let them change him willingly, not ever.

So sometimes, when you’ve eaten your daily rations and your mind feels less dull than usual, you plan. You let your face go blank and you think it all out in your head—what you’ll do when he tires of you, what moments he seems to lose track of when he’s in this room, and you sort it all out: exit points, escape routes, weaknesses here and _here_. You study the circuitry that holds Perry together, and you think you recognize it, a coil that can be temporarily shut down if you dislodge the green wire from his wrist. You think you can fix him. You _know_ you’ll bring him with you, when you escape.

Everyone’s skin is cold here, or they’re wrapped up in stiff gloves, scraped metal. Most nights, you fall asleep thinking of Perry’s hands—how warm they always felt when he pulled himself onto your shoulders, how deadly they became when, so long ago, he punched through sheets of metal and wire to claw at the other you’s face and leave that long, twisted scar.


End file.
